April 2015

24 April 2015

German automaker BMW is appealing to families with the assimilation of the location-sharing application Life360 into its vehicles.

Life360 offers families the opportunity to stay connected at all times and the presence of the app within BMW cars will allow drivers to drive to a member’s location with BMW ConnectedDrive. By monitoring digital and mobile trends brands such as BMW are able to connect with consumers on a more personal level.

16 April 2015

Wearable technology is yet to develop beyond the niche but it will be take-up by clothing brands that proves key to mainstream success. Adidas is one brand leading the charge to bring connectivity to its products to try to generate more direct-to-consumer channels, as Seb Joseph finds out.

Even traditional textspeak tends towards melodrama. We LOL (laugh out loud), rather than lumb (laughing under my breath). We sanction difference by exclaiming WTF. We ROTFLOL. We shriek OMG. Or ZOMG. A bad day is branded FML. The quietest ‘textpression’ is probably the oft overlooked smh.

Here's something you don't see every day: Chevrolet bought print ads to show off its digital videos.

The ad, which promotes Chevy's Colorado truck, appears in the May issue of certain subscriber issues of Esquire and Popular Mechanics. And it allows readers to watch one of three short videos, which were created by Chevy's creative agency Commonwealth//McCann.

09 April 2015

YouTube is planning to launch a subscription version of its online video service, for which viewers will pay to remove its advertising. New paid tier will launch later in 2015, but channel owners who opt out will have to make their videos private. The Google subsidiary announced its plans in an email to channel owners, while also informing them that if they do not sign up to participate, they will have to set all their videos to “private”.

India’s taxi app hailing war is heating up. This morning, details of Ola's latest $310 million funding round surfaced, and just hours later, Uber has introduced its first service that allows cash payments in the country. UberAuto is a new category for hailing auto rickshaws that is debuting in New Delhi. Uber said it is “a cash-only service for now,” with fares calculated using existing transport regulations.

Google is in talks towards a deal with Hutchison Whampoa, the owner of the mobile operator Three, that will allow Americans to use their phones abroad at no extra cost, industry sources have disclosed.

02 April 2015

YouTube is one of those internet milestones. The media content site literally offers an unknown number of videos you can watch. Short, long and everything in between. You can find your favourite shows, reviews of those shows and even re-enacted versions of those shows. It literally has something for everyone. Not to mention there is a whole load of official and paid content you can watch on there too. That said, like most video outlets (and apps in general), YouTube is not without adverts. What’s more they are typically ads you cannot really escape from. You can of course, hit the ‘skip ad’ button. However, that is usually only clickable after at least five seconds of the advert being played. Either way, it is presumed most people at some time have clicked that familiar skip ad button.

Toyota is bringing interactive hashtag marketing front and center at the South by Southwest festival by enabling attendees to use their smartphones to create Twitter-generated art at a live installation featuring the 2015 Corolla.